I question things which people take for granted. I would have been that kid who said the emperor was naked. In real life that kid would probably have been lynched, but I'll take my chances...
I believe truth inherently valuable, no matter how well intentioned the ideology it dispels may be.
I also write about random interesting things from my personal life.

24 November 2008

I am not an ass burger

First of all, I wish to formally express my displeasure that
the scientists and therapists were thoughtless enough to name a condition
without giving thought to its potential for school yard ridicule.
They already have trouble with socializing, and are likely to be identified as
different, (even though the in class helpers generally do a good job of hiding
the fact that they are there for anyone in particular). Eventually the
term is gonna leak to the general public, and it won't be long after that until
it trickles down to the school yard.
There was a time when "retard" was not an insult, but simply a
descriptor of a person whose intellectual development was significantly slower
than average. It meant "mental disability".
"Cripple" just means "physical disability". No matter
how many times we change the names, kids will start using the new term as an
insult, because its the content that carries the offensive meaning, not the
eventual term.
But did we really have to give them "Ass-Burger"?

But I digress (and that's pretty bad, since I haven't even started yet)

I noticed quite a while back that I seem to attract a disproportionate number
of teachers into my life - there can not possibly be as high a percentage in
the general population as the percentage of my friends, dates, and clients
are. Who would do all the other jobs that need doing in society? I
don't know why this is. I don't go looking for them. They find
me. I am not, and have no interest in ever being, a teacher. I
haven't even gotten a bachelors degree. And the chances are pretty high
that I never will.
But as it turns out, it gets even more specific than that.
Of all of my favorite people, 4 of them are currently or have in the past
worked as in-class therapists/tutors for autistic/aspergers grade-schoolers, or
in some similar way worked closely with them on a regular basis.
I realize it is being diagnosed more and more these days, but that's just
weird.

Or is it?

"...difficulties in basic elements of social interaction, which may
include a failure to develop friendships or to seek shared enjoyments or
achievements with others...
This social awkwardness has been called "active but odd". This failure to react appropriately
to social interaction may appear as disregard for other people's feelings, and
may come across as insensitive. The cognitive ability of children with AS
often lets them articulate social norms in a laboratory context, where they may
be able to show a theoretical understanding of other people's emotions; they
typically have difficulty acting on this knowledge in fluid, real-life
situations, however. People with AS may analyze and distill their observation
of social interaction into rigid behavioral guidelines and apply these rules in
awkward ways—such as forced eye contact—resulting in demeanor that appears
rigid or socially naive.
Abnormalities [in language use] include verbosity, abrupt transitions, literal
interpretations and miscomprehension of nuance, use of metaphor meaningful only
to the speaker... unusually pedantic, formal or idiosyncratic speech...
Children with AS may have an unusually sophisticated vocabulary at a young age
and have been colloquially called "little professors", but have
difficulty understanding figurative language and tend to use language
literally."

hmmm....

I obviously don't come close to many of the other common components (a narrow
range of interests, for example, or repetitive behaviors)

I am not an AssBurger.
But I'm not sure I could claim to be "Neurotypical" either.

I always thought I was perfectly normal.
That it was everyone else around me that had the problems.
But there has certainly been an obvious pattern. The same complaints,
especially about my misinterpretations of people's language (which people who
don't know me assume is deliberate), at least since high school (chances are I
just didn't notice before that).
A lack of awareness of peoples emotional states or reactions. All that
subtle non-verbal stuff which I am told makes up the majority of
communication... (not mine!). Interpreting things literally (come on,
honestly, wouldn't it just be so much easier if people just said what they
mean?) Annoyance that I am "too logical" (like that's supposed
to be a bad thing?). I have noticed sometimes that I can monologue with
people who don't really care. And that, I guess, is part of what
distinguishes me, that I recognize it on my own (albeit only in retrospect)

Of course the number of DSM IV entries increases every year, and the number of
people who fall into one of them does even faster.
At first there was just autism. Either you were autistic, or not.
Then it was recognized that it isn't always exactly the same, and the
definition was expanded to a "spectrum" of disorders.

10 years ago someone with Asperger's - socially inept, often physically clumsy,
extremely well versed in some narrow subject, literal use of language - would
have been referred to as a "nerd" (or possibly a
"geek". I get them mixed up).

It is now debated among professionals whether or not Asperger's should properly
be considered as a subset of autism. It can't be diagnosed by any one
characteristic, risk factor, or written test. In fact, it is usually
diagnosed by not just a doctor or therapist, but by a team of them. This
is implicate of how complex and imprecise it is.

Given that I seem to fall somewhere in a range between aspy and neurotypical, I
have to wonder if it is really something you either have or don't have.
But if there is a smooth and continuous range between them, and Asperger's
itself is a part of a range of ASD (Autistic spectrum disorder), and there is
no definitive way to draw concrete and consistent lines between these categories,
perhaps the categories themselves are an artificial construct.

I am beginning to suspect that Asperger's (along with a great many
"conditions") is perhaps the product of psychology professionals
obsessive need to label and categorize everything.
Wait...
isn't that a characteristic of mental disorder?